


Stories

by Flyting



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Darkfic, Gen, Horror, creeper!Rumplestiltskin, implied harm to a minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4553979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, children will tell stories about her- the girl who feared nothing. Not even Dark One.</p>
<p>Or: Morraine takes it upon herself to find out what happened to Baelfire. She finds Rumplestiltskin instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories

The spinner’s house stood quiet and abandoned.  
  
No one dared go near it.

For over a fortnight now the curtains had been pulled tightly shut and neither sound nor sign of life emerged from within. It had been a source of worry at first—better to know where a dragon was then to allow it to sneak up on you. But slowly, as days dragged into weeks, people had begun to whisper; cautiously and only when they were far out of earshot of the house itself, as if it might understand their words and somehow report them back to its absent master.

A monster used to live there, but now it’s gone.

The villagers who chanced to pass the house still did so quickly, with their heads down and eyes averted. Women still bit their tongues and made furtive gestures of protection. But travelers passing through the village could hear whole story anywhere men gathered and ale made tongues a bit more daring.  
  


The Dark One, who had so long served the Duke, had taken over the body of a cowardly spinner and held the town in terror.    
  


How this nightmare had come to pass varied, depending on who was telling the tale. According to one man, the Dark One had broken free of the Duke’s control, slaughtered his family in their beds, and razed his castle to the ground. Wounded in the escape, it had met the poor spinner on the road to Longbourne and stolen his body.

Another insisted that the spinner had made a deal with the Dark One, trading his soul in exchange for the Dark One’s knowledge and power.  
  
That he had used this power to end to Ogre War that had ravaged their countryside for generations had been overshadowed by what had come afterwards.

There, everyone had a part of the story they wanted to tell—  
  


_The monster massacred an entire squad of soldiers—I saw the bodies myself- just snapped their heads clean off—_  
  


_Poor Baelfire. He was a quiet boy, but so sweet. I can’t imagine—_

_It killed my brother! Rogen never hurt anyone—_  
  


_The miller’s daughter Lysa—she was such a beautiful girl. She disappeared, simply vanished into the woods one night. Roskva told me she saw him sitting at his wheel one morning, spinning Lysa’s golden hair into thread—_

_I feel safer letting my girls play outside now that it’s gone—_  
  


_He laid a curse on my lands! My livestock die, my crops wither—I was always kind to him, and this is the thanks I get!_  
  


_I saw him by the well one night—he was head to toe with blood—_

_That monster turned my Evan into a mouse! My only son! We have to keep him in a little box now—_  
  


_Yoran was a good man! He never meant that boy any harm!_

_I knew him… before. He was a coward, but not a bad man._  
  


What no one seemed to agree on was the ending.  
  


The monster had slaughtered the spinner’s son and fled into the night.  
  
Or perhaps the boy, who people in the village spoke of as brave and kind, had killed the monster while it slept and saved them all. 

But where, then, had he gone? No one had an answer.  
  


The creature was gone. That was all that mattered.  
  
But the eldest in the town, those who had been born in war and lived to see war take their children and grandchildren, would only shake their heads, eyes to their tasks. What did it matter how or why the evil had gone? It would be back. Or there would be another to take its place. There was always another evil.

 

–  
  


In the blackest part of the night, while the rest of the village sleeps, a small cloaked figure creeps toward the house.

In their relief at being free of the monster, everyone has forgotten that he wasn’t the only one who had disappeared. The spinner’s son Baelfire was missing as well, and Morraine is sick of waiting for adults to do something about it.

Morraine moves swiftly in the dark, skirting along the little pathways and shortcuts between houses as deft and silent as a cat. She’s come this way enough times before, climbing out her bedroom window after dark, to know all the little ways to avoid being heard.  How many times in summers past had she and Baelfire snuck down to the brook in the middle of the night to fish and hunt for night-crawlers? They always had to be silent until they reached the edge of the trees, as Bae’s father slept lightly, but once they reached the safety of the woods they were free until daylight or exhaustion drove them back home again.

She approaches the house from behind, sticking to the deeper shadows cast by moonlight along the wall. It’s unlikely that anyone is still awake to spot her, but she would rather not be caught here tonight.

Not until she’s completed her task.

There may be something inside the house still—some clue as to where Baelfire and his father have disappeared to. At least a hint of whether they’re still alive. It’s a long shot, she knows, but it’s better than doing nothing at all.

It’s better, she thinks, pausing with her hand on the door, than forgetting that her best friend ever existed, as everyone else seems to have done.

She draws her cloak tighter around herself as a cold breeze rattles along the side of the house. Morraine is not afraid of shadows or the ghosts of monsters. Especially not monsters who had always smiled kindly at her and called her ‘dear’.

A foul smell, like rot or decay, assaults her through the crack in the doorway and she pulls back reflexively, one hand covering her nose. Breathing shallowly she forces herself to step inside and allows the door to fall shut behind her.

She stands just inside the door for a moment, tensed, as she waits for her eyes to adjust to the murky gloom inside. Stupid not to have brought a lantern, but she hadn’t wanted to wake her parents. The little bit of watery moonlight that filtered through the windows was only just enough to keep the room from utter pitch blackness.

Still, after several seconds nothing has lunged at her out of the shadows, and there were no sounds save her own hurried breathing.  Even the air felt still. Morraine cautiously takes a few steps inside.

In the darkness she can just barely make out a sea of jumbled black shapes. She gingerly stretches out a hand to feel her way around the largest one in her path. It’s rough under her fingers, like broken wood. She takes a few cautious steps forward, her shoes crunching on what sounded like broken shards of ceramic.

As she becomes more accustomed to the dark, she realizes that she could identify the broken masses. Here and there a recognizable shape jutted out of the gloom.  
  


A broken chair.

A table snapped in half and jumbled together with part of a ladder.

Pieces of shelves half-torn from the walls, leaning brokenly into the empty air.

A cabinet lying on its side with doors gaping open and drawers torn out.

For the first time, Morraine started to feel afraid. Something terrible had happened here.  
  


Had Baelfire been here when it had?

She carefully makes her way around the largest piece in front of her, feeling around the broken furniture with her fingertips. She would try the desk first. If Baelfire and his father had left, there might be papers saying where they went.

She hisses as she bangs her shin on something hard in her path. Morraine crouches down in the middle of all the destruction, one hand rubbing absently at the growing bruise on her leg and the other groping for what she had run into. Her hand finds a twisted pile of metal that she thought might once have been a fine chandelier and pushes it out of the way.

As she does, she becomes aware that her shallow breathing is no longer the only sound in the room.

A quiet, rhythmic creaking of wood and leather was coming from the darkness to her left.

She freezes, still crouched on the floor. Every inch of her being is screaming at her to bolt from the house like a frightened rabbit; to run and keep running until she was safe at home in her own bed.

Morraine knew the sound of a spinning wheel when she heard it, and she knew who in this house used one.

She was terrified. A dozen horrible things flashed through her head—things she heard or had seen the Dark One do with her own eyes.

Yes, she was terrified. But then she thought of Baelfire—of his eyes and his slightly crooked smile and the stupid way his hair always stuck up in the back.

She hadn’t run from ogres and she wouldn’t run from Baelfire’s papa either. Not when he probably knows where her friend has gone.

“H-hello?” she calls, her voice far weaker than she would have liked.

No answer but the steady turn of a spinning wheel.

“Hello?” she tries again, after a deep, steadying breath, “Um…”

“Is- is that you? Sir?” she added after a moment, because her papa always told her to be respectful of adults, and being respectful seemed like a very good idea at the moment.

There is no response and she allows herself for a moment to hope that she might have mistaken the creak of some broken shutter for the sound of a spinning wheel.

She tries one last time.

“Do you- I just wanted to ask you something… Please?”

The creaking stops.

Baelfire would have protected her, she thinks, but Bae isn’t here anymore. For a moment she is half-afraid that the Dark One might curse her where she sits, crouched on his floor. Rip her into a million pieces or turn her into a snail and step on her.

But, she reminds herself, he could have done that at any point while she had still been stumbling blindly around his house. He hadn’t hurt her yet.

__  
“Yes?”  
  


That one quiet word in the blackness terrified her more than a thousand ogres.

After all, the worst thing the ogres would do was kill her.

Legs shaking more than she would have liked, Morraine forces herself to stand and face the direction the voice had come from.

_“Well_ _?”_  he barks.

Words spill out of her in a sudden rush of fright.“It’s just… I haven’t seen Baelfire in weeks and- I just wanted to know- to know if he’s alright.” Morraine sucks in a shaky breath. When there’s no response she adds, softer, “Bae’s my friend. I’m worried about him.”

There is a long silence in which she thinks she can feel his eyes on her in the darkness. “Gone. He’s gone.”

“Oh.”

She ought to go home.

She’s asked her question and he’s given her an answer. Baelfire’s words from the last time they spoke come back to her. Something evil has taken hold of him. She should run home and be grateful for it.

But that answer had been no answer at all.

“Do you know where he’s gone?”

When she has begun to give up hope of getting a response he answers, soft and bitter as sour fruit. “…No.”

He sounds unspeakably tired to her, in that moment. Tired and very old. More Bae’s crippled father who worked at his spinning wheel day and night than the cackling monster that had terrified their village.

“Go home, girl.” He says, with what almost sounds like a sigh.

The creaking starts up again.

Blinking in the darkness, Morraine turns and begins to pick her way through the maze of destruction to the door. She suddenly feels tired herself.

Baelfire’s loss is a dull ache in her heart. Gone, then, and even his father knew not where.

He had been unhappy, she knew. Frightened of what his father had become—he had told her as much the last time she spoke to him. But to leave without even saying goodbye? To abandon his father to the curse that had overtaken him?  It wasn’t like Bae.

She has managed to make her way back to the door without stumbling or tripping over anything when a thought occurs to her. Morraine pauses with her hand still on the latch.

“You might ask the Reul Ghorm,” she picks over her words with great care.

If Bae had gone to find the great power then it might know what had become of him. Still, it wouldn’t be at all wise to tell the Dark One why Bae had sought out the Reul Ghorm. “The last time I saw him, Bae spoke of it.”

The door refuses to budge when she tugs at the latch.

Not expecting any more response from him, she is startled to hear his voice again, grating and no longer weary. “Reul Ghorm… Tell me, what did he say?”

“Nothing. Only-“ Careful, she reminds herself. “He asked what the Reul Ghorm was, and how he might find it.”

There is a fluttering sound like some great bird taking wing and suddenly Morraine feels a presence behind her. She cannot seem to draw breath.

“Did he now.” The voice is just behind her ear, so close that she can feel the warm ghost of a breath when he speaks.

She squeaks in fright when there’s a playful little tug on a lock of her hair. “And what did you tell him? You two being such good friends.”

There is a familiar edge of danger to his words that makes her stomach quiver uncomfortably. She gives another secretive little pull on the door latch, but it’s like trying to move stone. “Only…” Her chest stings as she forces a deep breath. “He wanted to know- he was troubled- I only told him that the Reul Ghorm was the most powerful magic in the world and- and he wanted to know how to find-“

She does not hear the whisper of magic behind her  
  


–

The Spinner’s house stood quiet and abandoned.

No one dared go near it.

No one ever went near it.

Sometimes, on chilly autumn evenings, children would dare one another to sneak a peek through the shuttered windows before their mothers caught them and pulled them away. They whispered back to one another that there was nothing inside but a jumbled mess of ancient, rotting furniture. Nothing to be afraid of.

Do your chores and mind your elders, their mothers said, or the Spinner will snatch you from your bed while you sleep.

They knew all the stories, of course. Had grown up hearing the hearth-side tales of their parents and grandparents—those who had been saved from war and lived to see their children grow old in the shadow of a house that fell further into disrepair with each passing decade.

A monster used to live there a long, long time ago.

_A boy turned into a mouse._

_A woman’s golden hair._

_And a fearless little girl, whose name no one quite remembered anymore, who had simply vanished from her bed in the middle of the night, never to be seen again._

But those were only stories, after all.


End file.
